Windows 7 being better than Vista is saying a lot. Microsoft may have a huge PR advantage as people will compare it to Vista and think it is good so "angels will sing again" like they did with Windows 95 compared to Windows 3.1. So maybe Microsoft did this
on purpose.

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No comment.

A lot of what made Microsoft successful in the nineties is gone. There is a reason why people don't think they are successful anymore, but hey, I don't have a business model at all!

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No comment.

Proprietary was a downside, but what choice did I have? Hey, I usually do my presentation slides in PowerPoint.

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No comment.

I used to be a KDE user. I thought KDE 4.0 was such a disaster I switched to GNOME.

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This quote is causing a major stir in the free/open source community, since Linus was known to talk major crap about Gnome.

My job is the same and I do the kernel and nobody tells me what to do and they pay me for it, which is just the way I like it.

Gnome is the best desktop EVER. KDE just sucks and XFCE is stupid and nonfunctional.

I happen to agree with Linus. The state of KDE sucks and its really bad when you take the #1 desktop environment, in my eyes anyway, KDE 3 and you totally screw it up. The KDE team made the Vista mistake they didnt put enough polish on before they released
it and look what happened.

IMO, the reason why Microsoft is not so popular anymore has nothing to do with the state of computing, it has to do with the size and the fact Microsoft is no longer the underdog. In every aspect of life you will have the proverbial "good guys" and you
always have to have the "bad guy" everyone rallies against. In the nineties, IBM was the bad guy, in 2000 Microsoft has the title, in 2010 Apple will get the title. A lot of XP users are really looking forward to 7 and with good reason to. 7 will be an
awesome release for Windows users. Actually, I do think Windows 95 was the last release that had this much anticipation.

I really dont blame Linus for going GNOME, right now its basically 2 usable desktops GNOME and XFCE

I happen to agree with Linus. The state of KDE sucks and its really bad when you take the #1 desktop environment, in my eyes anyway, KDE 3 and you totally screw it up. The KDE team made the Vista mistake they didnt put enough polish on before they released
it and look what happened.

IMO, the reason why Microsoft is not so popular anymore has nothing to do with the state of computing, it has to do with the size and the fact Microsoft is no longer the underdog. In every aspect of life you will have the proverbial "good guys" and you
always have to have the "bad guy" everyone rallies against. In the nineties, IBM was the bad guy, in 2000 Microsoft has the title, in 2010 Apple will get the title. A lot of XP users are really looking forward to 7 and with good reason to. 7 will be an
awesome release for Windows users. Actually, I do think Windows 95 was the last release that had this much anticipation.

I really dont blame Linus for going GNOME, right now its basically 2 usable desktops GNOME and XFCE

I'm running KDE 4.2 on Fedora 10 and it works without problems. Like KDE developers said the first two versions were for "developers". I think those version should have been numbered differently though.

I happen to agree with Linus. The state of KDE sucks and its really bad when you take the #1 desktop environment, in my eyes anyway, KDE 3 and you totally screw it up. The KDE team made the Vista mistake they didnt put enough polish on before they released
it and look what happened.

IMO, the reason why Microsoft is not so popular anymore has nothing to do with the state of computing, it has to do with the size and the fact Microsoft is no longer the underdog. In every aspect of life you will have the proverbial "good guys" and you
always have to have the "bad guy" everyone rallies against. In the nineties, IBM was the bad guy, in 2000 Microsoft has the title, in 2010 Apple will get the title. A lot of XP users are really looking forward to 7 and with good reason to. 7 will be an
awesome release for Windows users. Actually, I do think Windows 95 was the last release that had this much anticipation.

I really dont blame Linus for going GNOME, right now its basically 2 usable desktops GNOME and XFCE

"In every aspect of life you will have the proverbial "good guys" and you always have to have the "bad guy" everyone rallies against."

That's the attitude I hate so much, that you HAVE to have a good guy and a bad guy (you're either on OUR side or the WRONG side kinda thing). It's an attitude that is most popular in American culture too and the reason why the I'm a Mac adds did so
well. People just LOVE being told which side is good and which side is bad so they don't have to make any decisions for themselves.

I'm running KDE 4.2 on Fedora 10 and it works without problems. Like KDE developers said the first two versions were for "developers". I think those version should have been numbered differently though.

The problem with desktop OS'es is the future is
no long Windows v Linux. Obviously there is the Mac but machines booting straight into Vmware applications or straight into browsers that have just enough OS to support there function are here.

What this means is that the traditional desktop OS supports generic computer use, but users are moving increasingly towards specific computer use. Take for example Games, the PC is no longer the platform of choice. Citrix, VDI, AJAX, Silverlight, Flash etc
are increasingly delivering richer clients and content. Even the humble PC is under attack, take for example my company, we give everyone a thin-client device that just has enough brains to run the Citrix ICA Client.

There will be a hugh market for generic computer use, but the percentage will not be as large as it once was. People won't care if it's Windows or Linux for that matter so will be a hollow victory if it is the latter.

People see buttons they can click on with the mouse and text boxes they can put stuff in that all helps them do whatever they want to do. What is happening underneath isn't important, it really isn't. We in IT have to realise this, the popularity of the Asus
EEE and the start of NetBooks proved this. No one really cares about Windows ... or Linux ... or Mac ... or Flash .... or Ajax ... because they haven't got enough emotion invested in the choices.

The only people that do care are the ones that have invested a career in it ... but ultimately at the end of the day we are just service providers.

The problem with desktop OS'es is the future is no long Windows v Linux. Obviously there is the Mac but machines booting straight into Vmware applications or straight into browsers that have just enough OS to support there function are here.

What this means is that the traditional desktop OS supports generic computer use, but users are moving increasingly towards specific computer use. Take for example Games, the PC is no longer the platform of choice. Citrix, VDI, AJAX, Silverlight, Flash etc
are increasingly delivering richer clients and content. Even the humble PC is under attack, take for example my company, we give everyone a thin-client device that just has enough brains to run the Citrix ICA Client.

There will be a hugh market for generic computer use, but the percentage will not be as large as it once was. People won't care if it's Windows or Linux for that matter so will be a hollow victory if it is the latter.

People see buttons they can click on with the mouse and text boxes they can put stuff in that all helps them do whatever they want to do. What is happening underneath isn't important, it really isn't. We in IT have to realise this, the popularity of the Asus
EEE and the start of NetBooks proved this. No one really cares about Windows ... or Linux ... or Mac ... or Flash .... or Ajax ... because they haven't got enough emotion invested in the choices.

The only people that do care are the ones that have invested a career in it ... but ultimately at the end of the day we are just service providers.

I have never been huge fan of OS wars. Actually, I don't care if Linux has ~1% market share rest of its existence. I installed Debian (Lenny) on my dad's desktop last weekend. As you wrote people doesn't care about the OS. He doesn't care at all what
OS he is running as long as he can do his daily tasks. If Amiga does the job for him he could use it without problems.

Personally I think it's nice that OS doesn't matter anymore as much it used to. Schools here are switching from ordinary PC platforms to thin clients (LTSP). They are talking about big savings which is of course really nice
thing to hear. The savings would not be possible without the alternative OSs.

Of course as a nerd and (FOSS) programmer I found it a bit uncomfortable to think that _all_ software will be running on "cloud" in future.

I'm a bit confused that Linus is whining about KDE 4.0. He could use KDE 3.x.y if he really wanted to but instead he switched to GNOME. Yes, Fedora doesn't support the KDE 3.x.y anymore.

"In every aspect of life you will have the proverbial "good guys" and you always have to have the "bad guy" everyone rallies against."

That's the attitude I hate so much, that you HAVE to have a good guy and a bad guy (you're either on OUR side or the WRONG side kinda thing). It's an attitude that is most popular in American culture too and the reason why the I'm a Mac adds did so
well. People just LOVE being told which side is good and which side is bad so they don't have to make any decisions for themselves.

Did I say that was my attitude? No, thats the attitude of most everyone out there. I dont play the software wars thing. I love everyone with the exception of Novell and Apple. Personally, I find the Microsoft developers and Xandros developers to be
the more professional. But, I digress.

The point being I agree, cant we all just get along.

@Erisan

KDE 4.2 may be better, I personally have had alot of problems with that even but I think in one of the PDC videos, I think it was Chatanyas Intro to the Windows 7 Desktop, he made a comment that rings true. When people use a product if the first impressions
are favorable they tend to like the product if they arent favorable it will be hated forever. My point with the KDE team is that they needed to have a longer beta testing process. 4.0 should never have been put out there for public consumption because people
dont pay attention to that "For developers only" statement. I dont do a public beta process for that sole reason alone. When I released PC/OS 2008 last year I did my first and only Public Beta and I got so much hatemail. One of the things I wrote "It wont
install on the hard drive, dont try a HD install yet" I wrote this for the world to see. I got tons of e-mails from users "PC/OS wont install to my hard drive, PC/OS sucks!!!!!" I was trying to get Wubi working and it just totally mucked things up royally
with the Installer that I had to fix it for beta 2. Unfortunately KDE 4 was the introduction to the product and everyone hated it now the KDE team not only has to work at fixing the software problems, they also have to deal with the PR problems.

[ rjdohnert
My point with the KDE team is that they needed to have a longer beta testing process. 4.0 should never have been put out there for public consumption because people dont pay attention to that "For developers only" statement. ]

Yeah, agreed. I don't understand why didn't they numbered versions 4.0 and 4.1 like 3.9.000 or 3.9.500 or whatever. A weird decision. KDE is still under heavy development. Aaron said that 4.2 -> 4.3 will be a big step forward.

[ rjdohnert
My point with the KDE team is that they needed to have a longer beta testing process. 4.0 should never have been put out there for public consumption because people dont pay attention to that "For developers only" statement. ]

Yeah, agreed. I don't understand why didn't they numbered versions 4.0 and 4.1 like 3.9.000 or 3.9.500 or whatever. A weird decision. KDE is still under heavy development. Aaron said that 4.2 -> 4.3 will be a big step forward.

@ erisan (Aaron said that 4.2 -> 4.3 will be a big step forward.)

Lets hope so. But they have to get the good press, they have to get people behind it.

Lets hope so. But they have to get the good press, they have to get people behind it.

True, they have a lot of work to do. This whole situation would have been avoided easily by using more sane numbers on pre KDE 4.2 releases.
Have you ever thought that PC/OS would use KDE4 instead of XFCE as a default desktop?

True, they have a lot of work to do. This whole situation would have been avoided easily by using more sane numbers on pre KDE 4.2 releases.
Have you ever thought that PC/OS would use KDE4 instead of XFCE as a default desktop?

When KDE is ready yes PC/OS will have a KDE release built, PC/OS 2009v2 includes GNOME and XFCE alongside each other due to customer demand. The developer working on the KDE release sent me a PC/OS build that he made with KDE 4.2.

When KDE is ready yes PC/OS will have a KDE release built, PC/OS 2009v2 includes GNOME and XFCE alongside each other due to customer demand. The developer working on the KDE release sent me a PC/OS build that he made with KDE 4.2.

Yeah ok. Not that
there's anything wrong with XFCE or GNOME. I love them. I will test PC/OS 2009v2 ...

"In every aspect of life you will have the proverbial "good guys" and you always have to have the "bad guy" everyone rallies against."

That's the attitude I hate so much, that you HAVE to have a good guy and a bad guy (you're either on OUR side or the WRONG side kinda thing). It's an attitude that is most popular in American culture too and the reason why the I'm a Mac adds did so
well. People just LOVE being told which side is good and which side is bad so they don't have to make any decisions for themselves.

American culture, how about all culture? People outside of the US just make it everyone else vs. America, where America
is the bad guy.

True, they have a lot of work to do. This whole situation would have been avoided easily by using more sane numbers on pre KDE 4.2 releases.
Have you ever thought that PC/OS would use KDE4 instead of XFCE as a default desktop?

Make sure you PM me or mail me your physical address so I can send you a complimentary copy. OpenWorkstation will be a retail product while PC/OS OpenDesktop --which doesnt have GNOME installed will be the free download.